Al Qaeda and bin Laden, simply put, wish to re-establish the Islamic Caliphate. They want it to stretch through the entire Middle East all the way to Spain. (go here if you actually want to read a bit about this). They want to drive the Jews into the sea in Israel. The sort of Sharia they advocate, with Afghanistan under the Taliban being Exhibit A, is *profoundly* oppressive towards women, non-Muslims, gays, etc. etc. If you really believe these fascists are freedom fighters, you're completely insane, and/or wilfully blind.
I didn't say "they hate us because of our freedoms" - I said that if we wish to oppose them, we cannot do so peacefully. I stand by this: these are people whose goals *must* be opposed, and who will never listen to reason. I know it's easier to put words in my mouth, but try and resist, please.
God forbid people like you ever get your hands on the levers of political power. Luckily, so long as people vote in the West, you won't.
Right. And talking things over with Hitler, calmly pointing out the flaws in his reasoning, sure worked to stop the Holocaust. I mean, no need to wage war on Germany, just kindly but firmly express disagreement with Nazism. Problem solved, eh?
People who think there's never a need for violence boggle my mind. Violence doesn't solve everything, but it's damn sure required sometimes.
Right. So, good luck talking al Qaeda over - I'm sure you'll be able to convince them, through logic and reason, that Sharia isn't really a good system of government, and that women should have full rights as citizens. Oh, and that there isn't a worldwide conspiracy of Jews plotting against them.
Not every conflict demands a gun, but nor can every conflict be settled by a friendly conversation over tea. His argument may be immature and short-sighted, but yours is breathtakingly naive and at least as dangerous as that of the shoot-firsters.
Hell, this would absolutely advance the art: using alternate tunings is a pain in the ass. If I had the freedom to choose an alternate tuning basically at will, it would open up tremendous possibilities. Choosing and using the tuning is the art: getting there is just a matter of turning a knob to the correct place. Not to mention that I wouldn't have to play the Tuning Song at gigs anymore...:)
My only concern is cutting my Les Paul open: will this thing work forever? Will it affect the tone? Do I like the way it looks? Etc.
I need to create a user for using the "I for one welcome our xxxxxx overlords" on every story. Apparently I'd have so much karma that I'd be able to buy/. with it.
...I must just be naive. I see the subject and I'm like, wow, 600+ comments for THAT? What could possibly be so legally significant here as to produce 600+ comments?
This whole "calling him a stalker is libel 'cause that's a felony, blah blah blah" is bullshit. Luskin knows damn well that Krugman wasn't accusing him of having committed a felony. But he's desperately trying to score points and muzzle Krugman (and his defenders); Luskin is OBSESSED with the guy.
Further, Luskin is a conservative, right? And he knows pro-lifers, right? Do you suppose he's ever, EVER come across someone who refers to abortion as murder? Or who calls women who've had abortions, or doctors who perform abortions, murderers? If so, did Luskin demand the prosecution of said pro-lifers for slander/libel, since abortion isn't legally murder? Or did he recognize that they had a right to refer to murder in the colloquial sense, rather than legal sense, when making an argument?
Luskin is a hypocrite and a cretin. And yes, throw me on the pile of people begging for prosecution: he's a stalker.
Stalk 1. To pursue by tracking stealthily. 2. To follow or observe (a person) persistently, especially out of obsession or derangement. 3. To go through (an area) in pursuit of prey or quarry.
Colloquial 1. Characteristic of or appropriate to the spoken language or to writing that seeks the effect of speech; informal. Relating to conversation; conversational.
Strictly speaking, anything that's actually scientific is only a theory, insofar as it's always possible that evidence to the contrary can be found. Newtonian physics is a great example of a set of principles that were considered "laws," but were later discovered to be inaccurate.
I personally like using gravity in these examples because (a) everyone thinks it's really simple, and an absolute law, (b) the commonsense idea that gravity, like there's a big magnet in the middle of the dense objects sucking everything towards it, is wrong, and (c) just because our understanding of gravity may be mistaken or incomplete doesn't mean we'll fly off the Earth.
I feel the same way about gravity: it's just a theory, so I get all steamed when schools present it as FACT. Don't you?
Sarcasm aside, there is nothing "scientific" about creationism - it's not just a competing theory, it's religion. As such, it has less than no place in a science class. Period. You want "equal time," then come up with a falsifiable theory and submit to peer-reviewed jornals.
Evolution, however, has as tremendous a weight of empirical evidence behind it as gravity does. Teaching it as science is no violation of the First Amendment, no matter how badly it honks off the anti-science folks.
You *know* this is bullshit - you *know* it. Not one church-state separationist that I'm aware of has *ever* suggested that political opinions informed by religiousity should be excluded from the public discourse - they just oppose laws without any secular justification whatsoever. In this case, the only possbile justification for cramming "under God" in the Pledge is religiosity; hell, there's not even a "tradition" exception, since it was done in the 50s.
"Forcing atheism" would be demanding that the Pledge say "one nation, with no God" or some such. Merely leaving reference to God out is not "disenfranchising" you, poor baby. Are you equally oppressed by the Constitution, a document in which the only reference to God is "In the year of our Lord"?
No atheists want to "force atheism" on Christians. If you have to resort to a strawman, as you apparently did, you've lost the argument.
...and I'll say it again: if the hard-luck cases Salon is busting out are indicative of "tough times," then these people have NO idea what hard times are and they need to quit whining. Witness:
"Market's job search, so far, has been less successful than he'd hoped. 'It used to be that if you were a smart programmer and could pick things up easily, they wanted to hire you,' he says. 'Now they want you to have done exactly what the last person in that job has done.' The average salary on offer is smaller as well. At his last job, Market was making about $125,000 a year -- which he concedes is large sum for someone his age. These days, 'the jobs I'm looking at are $80,000 or $90,000 for full-time,' he says. 'These are for actual development jobs, which I have a lot of experience in. I've written two books on Java.'"
$80-90,000 a year? You know what? Boo fucking hoo.
There are absolutely cases where good jobs are leaving and skilled people are left without a means to support themselves. Hell, my father is a tool and die maker, one of the absolute primo jobs to lose nowadays to automation and/or overseas workers. And yes, a LOT of people are unemployed right now. But the whining children in stories like this are really starting to piss me off. At least the guy I quoted seems to have genuine skills (two Java books); the cretins who think having screwed around with Dreamweaver in 1998 entitles them to upper-middle-class employment forever need to grow up.
And another thing: who the hell just sits around for a year, unemployed? What, you can't send in resumés if you're waiting tables, working construction, etc. etc.? There's literally NOTHING you can do for money other than monkey with Photoshop? Hell, I got laid off in 1999, was getting ready to apply at restaurants within a month, and was saved only by a call with my a job offer. Or...oh, is that work below the supa-cool web designers?
Seriously: we see these stories every so often on/. and it's just never-ending amusement. Spoiled fucking kids. Whew. I feel better.:)
Hey I got laid off a few years ago too, but doesn anyone else notice a *slight* disconnect between "No generation since the Depression has been set up for failure like this," and one of their 28-year-old hard luck cases, who is "looking at jobs that pay around $50,000, 40% below the salary he was collecting at Claimshop."
Oh, the humanity! $50,000 a year! However will he afford Gucci and Prada on such a pittance? $50,000 a year ain't filthy rich, but it sure as HELL ain't Depression-level poverty; I personally would be thrilled to get a raise that boosted me to $50,000 a year.
Once they find college-educated 30-year-olds forced to nourish themselves Grapes-of-Wrath-style with breast milk from healthier women, then I'll pay attention to the whining. Why do these stupid stories keep popping up?
Please, forgive me. I assumed that since the builder of the house is American, and built the house in America, that the "this [house and stuff like it] is why the world hates us" referred to Americans, and identified the poster as American. Perhaps you can point me to a reason why I shouldn't have concluded this. What, I should have assumed that he could have been using a house built in America, by an American, to make a point about why people hate Brazilians?
Wait, is *this* why the rest of the world hates us? I thought it was the war on terrorism. Or, that we haven't ratified Kyoto. Or, our arrogance. Or, our obesity rates. Or, our tendency to speak English in foreign countries. Or, blah blah blah, etc. etc. etc. [insert generalized statement based on individual's pet peeve/preference here].
I think you got one thing right accidentally, though: the reason *you* seem to hate this guy is because you don't have as much money as him, since you'd do the same thing if you did. Hmm.
Sorry, no disrespect, but you're wrong about the middle mouse button - it's a confirmed bug in Moz, and has been for over 2 1/2 years (!) (bug 22775; Opened: 1999-12-28 16:23) with no progress made. I've been following it, and a fix keeps slipping from version to version; now it's just "future" where it used to be 1.01.
I agree with you about the rest of the stuff. Thanks for the links to IE tabbed browsing programs.
In general, there is nothing IE can do for me that Moz can't.
Actually, there's lots it can't do, and unfortunately IMO some of these are pretty basic things. For example: no autoscrolling by clicking the middle mouse button; as someone else mentioned, no automatic form fill-in; bookmark sorting is broken; scrolling certain dropdown boxes with the mouse scroll wheel doesn't work; etc.
There are lots of great things about Moz, including tabbed browsing, popup killing, and other stuff. But it's just not full-featured yet, and I'm personally still using IE because of the reasons I listed above, which include what are for me some basic usability issues. Once these (and other) final quirks get fixed, Moz will be better than IE. IMO, right now it's not, and to say that "Moz can do anything IE does" is demonstrably wrong.
That's awesome. We've got very few domains, but we're basically in the process of doing the same type of thing. I don't think I've ever dealt with a company with more obtuse procedures than Verisign.
You're KIDDING!! Verisign? Incompetent? The hell you say! Who could possibly have guessed? Why, I've had nothing but an easy time with them, and their procedures have been nothing but pleasurable to conform to. And I have *not* abandoned them for other registrars.
1. It's not a matter of being a sub-monkey with less than half a brain, or being too lazy to do the work, it's the service agreement. I work for a reasonably large organization, and if I put machines together myself (a) I'm limited to individual component warranties, which are usually a year or less, and (b) it often takes weeks to RMA a bad part. Compare this to a three-year Dell warranty with 4-hour or next-day service.
2. The mom & pop shop down the street can't keep up with the needs of a big organization, and can't match Dell's service in large quantities. I've dealt with locals, and generally have abandoned them for these (and other) reasons. They're great for individuals, not at all sufficient for large numbers of PCs and users.
3. Anyone bigger than a mom & pop shop, even a midsize local company, has the same exclusivity agreement with Microsoft that Dell is trying to subvert. I've tried this as well; there's no net gain.
So, yes, most people (including me) have thought of these things; and yet amazingly, Dell continues to thrive. Thanks for being so smug, though.
We bought our Win2K Select licenses separately, quite some time ago (2 years or so), from CDW; they were upgrade licenses intended to be used with existing PCs that ran NT4. So, we've had a very hard time getting a discount for a Windows-less PC on the occasions that we've had to replace a dead machine or upgrade someone.
Considering that most vendors won't sell you a PC without a Windows license, I was beginning to wonder just what the hell the point of the Microsoft Select licenses was. I mean, wasn't it supposed to be that by buying them in volume, we'd get a discount? Wasn't this discount kind of, erm, compromised by the second license MS wants you to buy with new hardware?
This should have been a provision of any settlement the govt. accespted in the first place, but at least someone is doing it on their own. If Dell makes this stick, hopefully others will follow.
Really? Oh my GOD - you mean Futurama ISN'T A DOCUMENTARY?!?
(The person you replied to was making a joke. They weren't really trying to use Bender as an example of a well-adjusted thinking machine. Sometimes...)
Uh, that was a Simpsons reference: note the quotation marks in their post; this indicated that the person is quoting from a source, and not actually asking why one might want to program robots to feel pain.
Slashdot Mirror
"I am actually disinfranchised..."
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Not to be a littler bitch, but you're talking about volumes: 5th edition in this sense means "revision," I think.
You. Are. Out. Of. Your. Mind.
Al Qaeda and bin Laden, simply put, wish to re-establish the Islamic Caliphate. They want it to stretch through the entire Middle East all the way to Spain. (go here if you actually want to read a bit about this). They want to drive the Jews into the sea in Israel. The sort of Sharia they advocate, with Afghanistan under the Taliban being Exhibit A, is *profoundly* oppressive towards women, non-Muslims, gays, etc. etc. If you really believe these fascists are freedom fighters, you're completely insane, and/or wilfully blind.
I didn't say "they hate us because of our freedoms" - I said that if we wish to oppose them, we cannot do so peacefully. I stand by this: these are people whose goals *must* be opposed, and who will never listen to reason. I know it's easier to put words in my mouth, but try and resist, please.
God forbid people like you ever get your hands on the levers of political power. Luckily, so long as people vote in the West, you won't.
Right. And talking things over with Hitler, calmly pointing out the flaws in his reasoning, sure worked to stop the Holocaust. I mean, no need to wage war on Germany, just kindly but firmly express disagreement with Nazism. Problem solved, eh?
People who think there's never a need for violence boggle my mind. Violence doesn't solve everything, but it's damn sure required sometimes.
Right. So, good luck talking al Qaeda over - I'm sure you'll be able to convince them, through logic and reason, that Sharia isn't really a good system of government, and that women should have full rights as citizens. Oh, and that there isn't a worldwide conspiracy of Jews plotting against them.
Not every conflict demands a gun, but nor can every conflict be settled by a friendly conversation over tea. His argument may be immature and short-sighted, but yours is breathtakingly naive and at least as dangerous as that of the shoot-firsters.
Hell, this would absolutely advance the art: using alternate tunings is a pain in the ass. If I had the freedom to choose an alternate tuning basically at will, it would open up tremendous possibilities. Choosing and using the tuning is the art: getting there is just a matter of turning a knob to the correct place. Not to mention that I wouldn't have to play the Tuning Song at gigs anymore... :)
My only concern is cutting my Les Paul open: will this thing work forever? Will it affect the tone? Do I like the way it looks? Etc.
I need to create a user for using the "I for one welcome our xxxxxx overlords" on every story. Apparently I'd have so much karma that I'd be able to buy /. with it.
...I must just be naive. I see the subject and I'm like, wow, 600+ comments for THAT? What could possibly be so legally significant here as to produce 600+ comments?
So I read it. Ah! Dick jokes.
This whole "calling him a stalker is libel 'cause that's a felony, blah blah blah" is bullshit. Luskin knows damn well that Krugman wasn't accusing him of having committed a felony. But he's desperately trying to score points and muzzle Krugman (and his defenders); Luskin is OBSESSED with the guy.
Further, Luskin is a conservative, right? And he knows pro-lifers, right? Do you suppose he's ever, EVER come across someone who refers to abortion as murder? Or who calls women who've had abortions, or doctors who perform abortions, murderers? If so, did Luskin demand the prosecution of said pro-lifers for slander/libel, since abortion isn't legally murder? Or did he recognize that they had a right to refer to murder in the colloquial sense, rather than legal sense, when making an argument?
Luskin is a hypocrite and a cretin. And yes, throw me on the pile of people begging for prosecution: he's a stalker.
Stalk
1. To pursue by tracking stealthily.
2. To follow or observe (a person) persistently, especially out of obsession or derangement.
3. To go through (an area) in pursuit of prey or quarry.
Colloquial
1. Characteristic of or appropriate to the spoken language or to writing that seeks the effect of speech; informal. Relating to conversation; conversational.
Strictly speaking, anything that's actually scientific is only a theory, insofar as it's always possible that evidence to the contrary can be found. Newtonian physics is a great example of a set of principles that were considered "laws," but were later discovered to be inaccurate.
I personally like using gravity in these examples because (a) everyone thinks it's really simple, and an absolute law, (b) the commonsense idea that gravity, like there's a big magnet in the middle of the dense objects sucking everything towards it, is wrong, and (c) just because our understanding of gravity may be mistaken or incomplete doesn't mean we'll fly off the Earth.
I feel the same way about gravity: it's just a theory, so I get all steamed when schools present it as FACT. Don't you?
Sarcasm aside, there is nothing "scientific" about creationism - it's not just a competing theory, it's religion. As such, it has less than no place in a science class. Period. You want "equal time," then come up with a falsifiable theory and submit to peer-reviewed jornals.
Evolution, however, has as tremendous a weight of empirical evidence behind it as gravity does. Teaching it as science is no violation of the First Amendment, no matter how badly it honks off the anti-science folks.
You *know* this is bullshit - you *know* it. Not one church-state separationist that I'm aware of has *ever* suggested that political opinions informed by religiousity should be excluded from the public discourse - they just oppose laws without any secular justification whatsoever. In this case, the only possbile justification for cramming "under God" in the Pledge is religiosity; hell, there's not even a "tradition" exception, since it was done in the 50s.
"Forcing atheism" would be demanding that the Pledge say "one nation, with no God" or some such. Merely leaving reference to God out is not "disenfranchising" you, poor baby. Are you equally oppressed by the Constitution, a document in which the only reference to God is "In the year of our Lord"?
No atheists want to "force atheism" on Christians. If you have to resort to a strawman, as you apparently did, you've lost the argument.
...and I'll say it again: if the hard-luck cases Salon is busting out are indicative of "tough times," then these people have NO idea what hard times are and they need to quit whining. Witness:
/. and it's just never-ending amusement. Spoiled fucking kids. Whew. I feel better. :)
"Market's job search, so far, has been less successful than he'd hoped. 'It used to be that if you were a smart programmer and could pick things up easily, they wanted to hire you,' he says. 'Now they want you to have done exactly what the last person in that job has done.' The average salary on offer is smaller as well. At his last job, Market was making about $125,000 a year -- which he concedes is large sum for someone his age. These days, 'the jobs I'm looking at are $80,000 or $90,000 for full-time,' he says. 'These are for actual development jobs, which I have a lot of experience in. I've written two books on Java.'"
$80-90,000 a year? You know what? Boo fucking hoo.
There are absolutely cases where good jobs are leaving and skilled people are left without a means to support themselves. Hell, my father is a tool and die maker, one of the absolute primo jobs to lose nowadays to automation and/or overseas workers. And yes, a LOT of people are unemployed right now. But the whining children in stories like this are really starting to piss me off. At least the guy I quoted seems to have genuine skills (two Java books); the cretins who think having screwed around with Dreamweaver in 1998 entitles them to upper-middle-class employment forever need to grow up.
And another thing: who the hell just sits around for a year, unemployed? What, you can't send in resumés if you're waiting tables, working construction, etc. etc.? There's literally NOTHING you can do for money other than monkey with Photoshop? Hell, I got laid off in 1999, was getting ready to apply at restaurants within a month, and was saved only by a call with my a job offer. Or...oh, is that work below the supa-cool web designers?
Seriously: we see these stories every so often on
-brennan
Hey I got laid off a few years ago too, but doesn anyone else notice a *slight* disconnect between "No generation since the Depression has been set up for failure like this," and one of their 28-year-old hard luck cases, who is "looking at jobs that pay around $50,000, 40% below the salary he was collecting at Claimshop."
Oh, the humanity! $50,000 a year! However will he afford Gucci and Prada on such a pittance? $50,000 a year ain't filthy rich, but it sure as HELL ain't Depression-level poverty; I personally would be thrilled to get a raise that boosted me to $50,000 a year.
Once they find college-educated 30-year-olds forced to nourish themselves Grapes-of-Wrath-style with breast milk from healthier women, then I'll pay attention to the whining. Why do these stupid stories keep popping up?
-brennan
Please, forgive me. I assumed that since the builder of the house is American, and built the house in America, that the "this [house and stuff like it] is why the world hates us" referred to Americans, and identified the poster as American. Perhaps you can point me to a reason why I shouldn't have concluded this. What, I should have assumed that he could have been using a house built in America, by an American, to make a point about why people hate Brazilians?
Genius.
-brennan
Wait, is *this* why the rest of the world hates us? I thought it was the war on terrorism. Or, that we haven't ratified Kyoto. Or, our arrogance. Or, our obesity rates. Or, our tendency to speak English in foreign countries. Or, blah blah blah, etc. etc. etc. [insert generalized statement based on individual's pet peeve/preference here].
I think you got one thing right accidentally, though: the reason *you* seem to hate this guy is because you don't have as much money as him, since you'd do the same thing if you did. Hmm.
-brennan
Sorry, no disrespect, but you're wrong about the middle mouse button - it's a confirmed bug in Moz, and has been for over 2 1/2 years (!) (bug 22775; Opened: 1999-12-28 16:23) with no progress made. I've been following it, and a fix keeps slipping from version to version; now it's just "future" where it used to be 1.01.
I agree with you about the rest of the stuff. Thanks for the links to IE tabbed browsing programs.
-brennan
In general, there is nothing IE can do for me that Moz can't.
Actually, there's lots it can't do, and unfortunately IMO some of these are pretty basic things. For example: no autoscrolling by clicking the middle mouse button; as someone else mentioned, no automatic form fill-in; bookmark sorting is broken; scrolling certain dropdown boxes with the mouse scroll wheel doesn't work; etc.
There are lots of great things about Moz, including tabbed browsing, popup killing, and other stuff. But it's just not full-featured yet, and I'm personally still using IE because of the reasons I listed above, which include what are for me some basic usability issues. Once these (and other) final quirks get fixed, Moz will be better than IE. IMO, right now it's not, and to say that "Moz can do anything IE does" is demonstrably wrong.
-brennnan
That's awesome. We've got very few domains, but we're basically in the process of doing the same type of thing. I don't think I've ever dealt with a company with more obtuse procedures than Verisign.
You're KIDDING!! Verisign? Incompetent? The hell you say! Who could possibly have guessed? Why, I've had nothing but an easy time with them, and their procedures have been nothing but pleasurable to conform to. And I have *not* abandoned them for other registrars.
-brennan
A few things:
1. It's not a matter of being a sub-monkey with less than half a brain, or being too lazy to do the work, it's the service agreement. I work for a reasonably large organization, and if I put machines together myself (a) I'm limited to individual component warranties, which are usually a year or less, and (b) it often takes weeks to RMA a bad part. Compare this to a three-year Dell warranty with 4-hour or next-day service.
2. The mom & pop shop down the street can't keep up with the needs of a big organization, and can't match Dell's service in large quantities. I've dealt with locals, and generally have abandoned them for these (and other) reasons. They're great for individuals, not at all sufficient for large numbers of PCs and users.
3. Anyone bigger than a mom & pop shop, even a midsize local company, has the same exclusivity agreement with Microsoft that Dell is trying to subvert. I've tried this as well; there's no net gain.
So, yes, most people (including me) have thought of these things; and yet amazingly, Dell continues to thrive. Thanks for being so smug, though.
-brennan
We bought our Win2K Select licenses separately, quite some time ago (2 years or so), from CDW; they were upgrade licenses intended to be used with existing PCs that ran NT4. So, we've had a very hard time getting a discount for a Windows-less PC on the occasions that we've had to replace a dead machine or upgrade someone.
-brennan
Considering that most vendors won't sell you a PC without a Windows license, I was beginning to wonder just what the hell the point of the Microsoft Select licenses was. I mean, wasn't it supposed to be that by buying them in volume, we'd get a discount? Wasn't this discount kind of, erm, compromised by the second license MS wants you to buy with new hardware?
This should have been a provision of any settlement the govt. accespted in the first place, but at least someone is doing it on their own. If Dell makes this stick, hopefully others will follow.
-brennan
Really? Oh my GOD - you mean Futurama ISN'T A DOCUMENTARY?!?
(The person you replied to was making a joke. They weren't really trying to use Bender as an example of a well-adjusted thinking machine. Sometimes...)
Uh, that was a Simpsons reference: note the quotation marks in their post; this indicated that the person is quoting from a source, and not actually asking why one might want to program robots to feel pain.